SHAPED LIKE THEMSELVES CREATING HISTORIES:ORAL NARRATIVES AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY -MAKING. By Wendy Singer. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. xx, 339. I In the late 1980s Wendy Singer sat on verandas in Pandaul and spoke with peo- ple about things that had happened there fifty years before. Pandaul is a town and region in the Indian state of Bihar. During the Indian freedom struggle, it was a center of movements that were part of or related to that upheaval. Not much has been written about Pandaul’s history, and its people were glad to speak with an American historian who knew their languages and had a sympathetic ear. As Singer proceeded, she reflected on the nature of the material she was collecting and of historical evidence in general. Listening to the stories of the people of Pandaul, it struck her that all historical source materials are “comprised of sto- ries which are the foundation of history” (x). In time the focus of her research shifted from Pandaul and its movements to the nature of history and its making. So at least I imagine it. Singer in fact tells us little about how she came to Pandaul or decided on her topic. It is possible that she arrived in Bihar with a the- ory of narrative formed or forming in her mind, which she tested against the data she collected. Or perhaps it was a combination of both: a search for data, a nascent theory, the data modifying the theory, the theory molding or, to use a favorite word of Singer’s, shaping the data. My point here, and it is a point that Singer also makes, is that we humans use narrative to make sense of information, or rather to turn the data that assaults us into “information.” But I also want to suggest that narrators sometimes get it wrong. For a narrative to be right, the nar- rator has to know what happened or at least be well enough informed to produce a reliable account. Since I lack sufficient data to produce a reliable account about how Singer came to write her book, let me begin again. Creating Histories is about two dif- ferent things. First, it recounts and analyzes events that took place in a region of northern India during the 1930s. It is the first significant study in English to deal with this area and period, and it does so comprehensively. Second, it considers this same material, and historical source-material in general, from the perspec- tive of ideas put forward by literary and anthropological theorists. The second of these aims tends to overshadow the first. As the author says in her introduction, her primary aim “is to examine the processes of history-making rather than the ‘events’ that those histories describe” (11). The scare-quotes around “events” warn us that she is going to engage with the- ories that question the distinction between fact and fiction. She does consider History and Theory 39 (October 2000), 417-428 © Wesleyan University 2000 ISSN: 0018-2656